The Tales Of A Dad Trying To Keep Up With His Precocious Daughter

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When my nine year old was a three year old she did her first horseback riding lessons, and she also fell off a horse for the first time. The instructor helped her stand back up and told her the best thing for her to do was get right back up on the horse. She agreed immediately, and was back up and riding a moment later. It’s a moment of pride I still remember fondly, when she literally got back on the horse.

We’ve been doing Taekwondo together now for almost four years and when my nine year old reached brown belt she ran into a new obstacle. At brown belt board breaking became part of the test and she didn’t break her boards. Even though this meant not passing her belt test, she was still committed to seeing it though and says she will still someday get her black belt.

Last night we went to testing again. She did her form, then did two rounds of sparring. Then, during her third and final round of sparing she got kicked right in the eye. She dropped down to her knees and the instructor asked, “Can you still fight?” She shook her head no, holding her hand over her eye. The instructor then said, “You are still testing. Can you get up and finish your test?” At this my daughter immediately nodded her head yes, and then got back up and finished the sparring round. I was very proud of her and was reminded of the horse years ago as she literally didn’t quit the fight.

We celebrated My Six Year Old becoming My Seven Year Old with a trip to Disneyland. It was a fun trip for the whole family, and we made a lot of good memories, but for me one of the biggest, most impactful memories happened as we were getting ready to leave.

My daughter had begged me for a balloon, and I had put it off until the end of the day, as I didn’t want to carry a balloon all over the park, much less figure out what to do with it on rides. She had persisted, though, and she finally got her balloon. She loved the balloon and just gushed over it, talking about how cool it was that it was actually a balloon inside of a balloon, and playing with it all during the parade and fireworks show, and all the way back to the hotel.

The next morning, though, as we were packing up and getting ready to leave the conversation came up that we couldn’t take the balloon on the plane.

She was absolutely heartbroken. Real tears were being shed and my offer to deflate the balloon so we could take it home didn’t help any. The idea of DESTROYING the balloon (even a pinhole) was right out. So we finally decided the thing to do was to give the balloon away so some other child who would love it.

We went down to breakfast, ordered food, and then left the rest of the family waiting for food to arrive while we went searching for a child. We had avoided the hotel gift shop. When my daughter had asked to go in there previously I had asked why in the world would we go into the hotel gift shop to buy random (non-Disney) stuff when we were at Disneyland and could buy Disney souvenirs that you can’t get anywhere else.

Well it was about 6:30 a.m. as we had an early flight to catch, and there was only one child that we found that seemed to be the right age to appreciate the balloon. He was little boy, who looked to be around 3, with his mother in the gift shop. So we went into the gift shop and I talked to the mother for a minute to make sure they weren’t getting on a plane today too, and then nodded to my daughter.

She stood up straight, squared her shoulders, looked at the balloon for a moment, and then puffed up her chest and offered it to the little boy. “Would you like this balloon?” she asked “It’s a really nice balloon. I think you’ll really enjoy having it.” The little boy’s face lit up and he took the balloon… and I started tearing up. The whole scene, watching my daughter prepare herself to give the balloon away, watching her talk up the balloon even as she was handing it over, was just too much for me.

She looked at me, and both of us had tears in our eyes. And then she looked up at the top shelf along the wall, the one where they keep the ridiculously big toys in the gift shop that no one in their right mind actually buys, and her face lit up as she pointed.

And that is how we ended up bringing home a rather large My Little Pony stuffed animal from Disneyland.

“Do you want to see the new way I invented to get on a swing?” My Six Year Old Asked, “First you back way up and then you imagine you’re a unicorn with no horn and then you run and jump on the swing.”

“Wouldn’t a unicorn with no horn just be a horse?” I asked her.

“No Daddy,” she said with exasperation. “I mean a unicorn whose horn blew off in the wind. You have to imagine you’re a unicorn that lost its horn and you have to run faster than the wind to get it back.”